Gateway.radio

Manic Street Preachers - 1998

I woke up this morning from a dream where If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next had been playing on a radio in a sunlit room in a dream. So naturally, I sat down with my morning coffee and just had to listen to the track on the album This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours. Which said it had the release date August 01, 1994. Which confused me. Cause I remembered listening to this album in school with my mates and no way was I 11 at the time. I was in upper school. So a quick trip to Wikipedia told me this album 14 September, 1998. That’s more like it yeah. I was 15 at the time this came out. A quick chat with the AI bot on the support page of Tidal let them know the correct information and the bot told me it would put the album under review. Spent a few seconds there thinking all my memories were false.

You Stole the Sun from My Heart is the next track on the album after If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next. A stark warning about the need to start shooting fascists pretty fucking soon and acceptance of their place in this world is all downhill from here onward. If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next. Huh. But then You Stole the Sun from My Heart came on and I just remembered what a glorious track this. From it’s staccato drums to it’s huge, era defined, Brit Rock guitars. This song doesn’t as much take me back as it reminds me that love is just fucking weird and I still don’t get it now. You have broken through my armour and I don’t have an answer. I love you all the same. I’m lost among the undergrowth, so much so I woke up. I love you all the same. You stole the sun from my heart.

What’s your comfort food? When everything is weighing you down and you just need a pick me up? For me it’s to go through the Clutch back catalogue. Guitars that just smash your face off, an easy to nod along to blues rhythm and a singer who spouts tales of wonders. In the shadow of Cerebus her spirit will reside. She dances on black sand in the night, In a linen dress. It doesn’t have to mean anything. It means everything to me. Just larger than life riffs being pounded into my skull at breakneck speed while a Hammond organ screeches in the background adding more layers to the cacophony of the trial of La curandera. It’s a small dose of ridiculous dressed in seriousness but with a wink in its eye and jaunt in its step.

How To Destroy Angels- 2010

Two years had passed since the final farewell album from Nine Inch Nails had been released for free on their website as a thank you to the fans. Two years and me wondering, well, now what do I do? And then A Drowning got released. The first track I heard from the upcoming album How To Destroy Angels by, How To Destroy Angels. And everything felt right with the world again. Trent was making music and his wife was singing some of the most haunting vocals wrapped in that distinctive multi-layered textured sound I had had around me since my first days of dipping my toes into music loving serious. We were back. And with a track to make us feel that there never could be a purpose to anything again, but please. Just help. If you can.

Dead Sara - 2015

Muffled like I’m listening underwater. Thoughts that shouldn’t take root but sit there anyway. Just doing our best to drown them but they scream back from underwater. Do you ever feel like dyin’, she screams at you. I remember talking to a therapist once and them asking if there are suicidal thoughts and I said oh just the usual amount you know. 3 or 4 times a week. She said no. The correct amount is zero. What? That doesn’t seem right. So some people go through their whole lives without that. Do what we gotta do to make it through is the last line screamed from underwater before the music moves into the room with us. A brief moment where we just stand tall and say, it is what it is, but we keep on going.

For such a taboo subject, erased by algorithms so we can no longer have a public discourse on the subject matter, the music is incredibly upbeat once it is allowed to breathe and is acknowledged. As with most dark and anti-marketing subjects, once the light is shone on them they become less taboo. So when the stadium chorus comes around you found yourself scream singing along with the chorus yelling at the top of your lungs, We’re suicidal! And finding the entire thing so cathartic.

Upon hearing this cover, I knew this would forever be the definitive version. An old friend up in Norrland showed me this and it was love at first sight. There could never, ever be another version and the original will always feel half-assed in comparison to this. Just Haynes up there on that stage. A single acoustic guitar carrying the weight of all the regrets felt and still to come. And a voice that has just had too much pain for one lifetime.

One for me will always be that dark night of the soul between two lovers. That talk. The one you been putting off and delaying for so long. But now it has to come to a head. This has to get out in the open. Those feelings you had for so long weighing down your guts and making everything so heavy. But how do you express them? The only emotion you ever really understood is anger. And in turn became the only way you ever knew how to express emotion. And this person in front of you is asking you to express yourself with a vocabulary you never learned.

Rebekka Karijord- 2009

A haunting piano to lull us in, and before we can even find our footing she starts singing. She sings with an exhaustion that can only come from losing patience with yourself. Every single day. I don’t know where this fear came from. This fear of failing, fear of letting myself and everyone down. It’s like knives straight through the ego and the heart just sinks inside my chest hearing this. A heart wrenching call for help where the only problem is the noise inside your own head and the fear that holds you still. Just forcing you to listen to every single part of you that wants you to fail and made manifest in song.

This fear is growing deep into my soul. Make me all paralyzed and cold she sings and I just feel my head hang even heavier. When did this fear start dictating all my decisions? Why did she have to put into words the weight that’s been holding me down for longer than I can remember? Cause if I don’t follow my heart this time, I’m gonna forget what this life is all about. What does the heart even want when it’s crushed daily inside a machine that demands time for survival? Where does the heart turn when it is too heavy? There is sadness so deep inside this song that even the resolution feels too monolithic to contemplate.

Nothing hits. All the words are fake extensions of an ego that can’t rest. Time to exorcise all that noise with Silence. And it has to be just the mix. All other mixes are wrong. This is my home. This is where I stood and reached for the lasers. This is comfort in a bass line that rearranges the insides to say stay in this moment. Right here. Right now. With me. This is the only place you need to be. Feel it flow through you. Let the music build, let it take you places beyond where the ego can reach. Just close your eyes. Oh. My. God. That voice. I just need to close my eyes, listen and nothing else can exist right now. The song gets busy but I can always hold onto that rumbling rolling bass and Sarah’s voice A guide during this moment of silence inside my head where I can just listen.

And I wanted to believe that I’d get caught up, when the rage in me subsides. The drums fade, the synth of the angels builds up and Sarah just unleashes a powerful and gentle pummeling of how much the silence means when all the anger subsides. There is a freedom that comes from standing in the silence and just letting it crash over. In this white wave of serenity, I am free. I have seen you. Inside this white wave and you are silent. You are with me. And the silence has to end to make way for the thumping tempo of clarity given and of journeys beginning from this place of peace.

In celebration of the UK’s last place in the Eurovision we gonna look at some other music by LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER, cause in all honesty this guy is fantastic. Be it making the nightmare fuel that is a Furby organ to producing absolute bangers like this track to constructing his own weird and whacky instruments. Cause what else is a bonkers sound engineer to do? Night or Day starts with guitars harking back to the height of Brit pop before a fat filthy synth comes with backing vocals created by himself on a reverb loop. I know I getting too technical here and just splooging over the guy but my god this mans creativity is without borders and I am in awe just to sit in the shade of what he makes. Marvel at the construction of it all and giggle with excitement of a schoolboy putting mentos into a coca-cola bottle for the first time.

The song is a declaration of rapture. I have built all my machines, taken all of my pills and now there is nothing left to do. I need to run away from here, tasting absolutely no fear. Just keep running until there ain’t no night or day. No say, no space, no shame. Just a blending of all the hours so neither night or day exists. The demons that come at nighttime are now creative muses. The lethargy of sunlight and days spent waiting for the night to roll around to get back to the real work. I’ve seen the fractures, call them what you will. There’s nothing to redeem. A journey beyond the accepted walls we put around ourselves just to be drowned in the rapture of the synth gods.

Happy birthday Trent. How do you pick a favourite from such a vast catalogue where brilliance is facing you at every turn? How about the double album I brought on release day, skipped working to stay at home and listen to all day long and only really grew to fall for this track just a year ago? Starting in a deep dark synth hole of claustrophobic where sorrow highlights the oppression. Just surrounded by the depths of every mistake ever made and being told, listen. This is what every regret you ever made sounds like. Is there hope for me? All the spoils of a wasted life. All of this for you. Can it ever mean a thing? Whispers so distant just telling you repeatedly, you made all the wrong choices. She is gone. You are gone. It’s all gone. Forever. There is no coming back from this. The currents are pulling you away from every ambition you ever held. 

And a sudden violent outburst. And I descend from grace. In arms of undertow. I will take my place. In the Great Below. This is my home now. Sucked away and dragged out into a vast expanse of nothing but void. There is nothing here. It is the Great Below. Where nothing can exist and nothing can hurt me anymore. But I can still feel you. Even so far away. You never left entirely. You still live under this skin. And no matter how far the current pulls me into the void. You will always be there. Buried underneath everything I have created and abandoned and destroyed. An echo of a memory of a time when it all meant something. 

A huge part of me is convinced that 1994 was the greatest year for music. Both Blur and Oasis debuted here. Nirvana had just given us In Utero and Courtney Love’s desperate plea in the album Live Through This, was haunting. I feel such a desperate stay-with-me-sadness echoing throughout that whole album. And then there is Live - Throwing Copper. Right at the tail end of grunge but still walking their own path completely. I Alone is where we land today to glimpse back at this era. A song that starts so gentle and caring and fills me with a dread that lives on today. 

Promises of companionship and caring in the start of a relationship. I will be there for you, I will care for you, I will offer the world according to where I am standing and you will be grateful to receive it. But then the stadium sized chorus kicks in with cries of I alone love you, I alone tempt you, I alone love you. I am the only one you can turn to for love. There is no one else but me, myself and I. And I am pretty certain that is not the message being portrayed in the world of 1994. But in a way, surely he knows? He knows this is the repetitive sonic battery into submission and isolation. It’s all I can hear myself and I am pretty certain just by saying this, I have ruined this song for someone. 

Just longing for a chemically induced revelation to come from somewhere. To stand on top of the engines of my own mind and say look. I understand it. I can feel what it means to be alive and a part of this weird and wonderful shared hallucination where pain and suffering go hand in hand with pleasure and ecstasy. Just pour a heroic dose inside my body. Let me dream of a future that doesn’t exist inside of any known reality. Let the beat of the music take me to a place where I can hear you and you can hear me. You know I almost lost my mind. I couldn’t explain. What I have seen. See waves breaking form to my horizon. I’m shining.

The beat is solid and body moving. This needs movement to exist and I have to move to feel the music. It’s only natural. The beat. From where we all began. Boom boom. Boom boom. A constant beat inside our developing heads as we waited without even knowing. Soon we would see the world and the beat would fade. Alone surrounded by ones who love and intimacy of the beat torn away from us. Are you feeling me? Like I am feeling you? My heart and soul they long to be free. But the doorway is forever out of reach. The acid test. Never taken. Always wanted to. 

A melancholic tone to slow the heart right down. Just settle down into the saddest version of yourself and listen as layers of reverse hedonism wash over you. The singer comes in and it’s haunting. Just a voice that pushes inside the skin to nestle inside and say hey, I’ve got some discomforts to share with you. Wanna listen? If only I was wise enough, to know everything sure and true about myself, you would not be here. If only I knew the person I am, would that not make it easier to navigate this life? Or is the lack of knowing who I am the only reason you stay around? You took the pieces of our lives. And made us something new. Here I was just gliding through life and you took all of that lack of direction and gave it purpose that we could build upon together. 

Now you don’t see me trying. I put all my purpose into you and you were not enough to fill this empty vessel. I took that purpose you gave to the both of us and expected you to carry it all. So if you want to surrender, then I will too. If you want me to carry on, then I will do. All of this broken life, is yours to carry. For both of us. Cause I have become so co-dependent that any choice in regards to our future is locked in a place I cannot go. A place where I am wise enough to know myself. You know myself for me and that is the weight you must carry if we are to carry on. 

As I was setting this all up to write I see this song is from 2017 and today I heard someone say, way back in the ancient times of 2017 in a documentary. Nothing more to add. Just ouch. This song starts with a fat rolling riff that is just relentless in its pursuit of foot stomping music. The kind of riff that stirs something inside the deadest of cold black hearts. Let these rains come, to wash us all away. Time to let go of these old hands of mine. And suddenly plunged into the cold dark of slow and deliberate riffs. A single hi-hat ticking the seconds away. And tranquility. A reprise from the need to just let it all go. Sweet melodies soothing the worries away as. Gentle caress of sound easing the transition. The constant ticking of hi-hat. That reminder that even in downtime, time marches on and we can’t stop it even if we do have time to smell the roses. 

Guitar solo crescendoing to a higher plane. Taking all that stillness and turning it into a deity of sonic adulation. A pause with seemingly no end that won’t stop growing in size. Taking over all the silence to fill the air with its gross size and structure. A stuttering feedback loop is suddenly walked into, the sound can’t continue as it fades into an echo. And the first big fat riff starts up again. But lacking the original momentum. It struggles to get started before it lands on its feet and just keeps on pushing through to that foot stomping, cheshire cat grin inducing riff. Enjoy this for a moment and keep on stomping them feet. Racing faster and faster towards a destination we can’t see. 

Slow dirty synths, rhythmic hip-thrusting drumbeats, ridiculously low voice beckoning us in, whispers in the background adding tension. Life is like a dream, it’s a nightmare. Right. Screamed with venom and violence in the heart. Bass drop and happy disco beats wrapped in dirty synths and melodic singing of I’m gonna be your nightmare baby. 

A brief respite in the soundscape. You take it all. Who are you? Why do you need it all? The illusion of knowing that we know nothing at all. And it’s still a blank page. Racing bass, warped sounds, echos of a past moment clinging to the air. You take it all. You take it all. Again. And suddenly clarity inside the eye of the storm. My heroes don’t fly, they get all up inside. You feel them in there? Placing seeds of curiosity that your mind muscle has to flex to grow. The invisible plan. To just grow. In any way possible. By just doing this. 

Everything has already been said before and there is nothing left to say but still an endless tsunami of words that must come out. Why? For what purpose? Who do you write for? You hear that rumbling bass? Rolling in and surrounded by the siren’s call? It’s the sound of constant tension that never breaks. That sounds that haunts your waking life and lives just below the surface of the image you project into the world. The idea that anyone sees behind this facade is terrifying. The idea of living another day with this mask equally so. Just let the tension rise. Don’t touch it. Don’t feel it. Don’t look at it. Don’t acknowledge. Just pretend you got this, keep going forward. For what purpose? Who knows. Just to see another day? Is that enough? 

Why are we putting words to paper? Why did we stop? Why do I have to carry on? That siren call. It’s there, under the tension. What is she calling me towards? What am I being called away from? Who wants to see this fake attempt at a life and say that is interesting. One shot, it’s all you get. And you waste it away, fading away. Promises made for tomorrow, never kept for today. All that potential, they said. And now? A lonely room, in a lonely house, to an audience of none. For no other purpose than I have to. But I don’t even know why I have to anymore and the routine has faltered. Stumbled. Decayed to become an idea, instead of an abject event. 

That raw, downplayed and understated guitar that dominated the early 90s is our welcoming guest. Come in, sit down, listen. Let me tell you a story. I been sweeping the leaves out of my driveway. I’ve been living a good life up to now. Tell me about how living a life so mundane and contained has kept you sane. Kept you close to the precipice of sanity while the repetitive noise of just living a good and simple life is keeping you stable. Guitars moving with a purpose, drums steady. Never speeding up, never slowing down. Just onwards. All the time. Well here’s one soul your system won’t save. Well I been living a good life up to now. I been sweet and I been good. I’m doing what is asked from me and trying to make it in this world. I’m doing it all right. And I am so close to the edge of just letting it all fall apart. A time bomb waiting to go off and just burn it all down with me. 

A while back I had a job where I had to drive. A lot. Every shift. And after getting bored of my own music for so long, I went to the radio just to see what was happening there. And apparently it was this. African music hour or something. This tune is just relaxation and summer evening vibes all in one. Sitting on the beach, drink in hand, children running around and having fun. I have no idea what it is being said or what the song is about but the vibes. The chill factor. The absolutely ridiculously phat bass coming in cause why not? Just add a brief rearrangement of the guts to the chill factor.